The Second Fredric Brown Megapack: 27 Classic Science Fiction Stories Page 7

  Cargan, the city ed, came out of his private office and walked over to us. “Any of you guys know Barney Welch?” he asked us.

  A silly question. Barney runs Barney’s Bar right across the street from the Trib. There isn’t a Trib reporter who doesn’t know Barney well enough to borrow money from him. So we all nodded.

  “He just phoned,” Cargan said. “He’s got a guy down there who claims to be from Mars.”

  “Drunk or crazy, which?” Slepper wanted to know.

  “Barney doesn’t know, but he said there might be a gag story in it if we want to come over and talk to the guy. Since it’s right across the street and since you three mugs are just sitting on your prats, anyway, one of you dash over. But no drinks on the expense account.”

  Slepper said, “I’ll go,” but Cargan’s eyes had lighted on me. “You free, Bill?” he asked. “This has got to be a funny story, if any, and you got a light touch on the human interest stuff.”

  “Sure,” I grumbled. “I’ll go.”

  “Maybe it’s just some drunk being funny, but if the guy’s really insane, phone for a cop, unless you think you can get a gag story. If there’s an arrest, you got something to hang a straight story on.”

  Slepper said, “Cargan, you’d get your grandmother arrested to get a story. Can I go along with Bill, just for the ride?”

  “No, you and Johnny stay here. We’re not moving the city room across the street to Barney’s.” Cargan went back into his office.

  I slapped a “thirty” on to end the banquet story and sent it down the tube. I got my hat and coat. Slepper said, “Have a drink for me, Bill. But don’t drink so much you lose that light touch.”

  I said, “Sure,” and went on over to the stairway and down.

  I walked into Barney’s and looked around. Nobody from the Trib was there except a couple of pressmen playing gin rummy at one of the tables. Aside from Barney himself, back of the bar, there was only one other man in the place. He was a tall man, thin and sallow, who was sitting by himself in one of the booths, staring morosely into an almost empty beer glass.

  I thought I’d get Barney’s angle first, so I went up to the bar and put down a bill. “A quick one,” I told him. “Straight, water on the side. And is tall-and-dismal over there the Martian you phoned Cargan about?”

  He nodded once and poured my drink.

  “What’s my angle?” I asked him. “Does he know a reporter’s going to interview him? Or do I just buy him a drink and rope him, or what? How crazy is he?”

  “You tell me. Says he just got in from Mars two hours ago and he’s trying to figure it out. He says he’s the last living Martian. He doesn’t know you’re a reporter, but he’s all set to talk to you. I set it up.”

  “How?”

  “Told him I had a friend who was smarter than any usual guy and could give him good advice on what to do. I didn’t tell him any name because I didn’t know who Cargan would send. But he’s all ready to cry on your shoulder.”

  “Know his name?”

  Barney grimaced. “Yangan Dal, he says. Listen, don’t get him violent or anything in here. I don’t want no trouble.”

  I downed my shot and took a sip of chaser. I said, “Okay, Barney. Look, dish up two beers for us and I’ll go over and take ’em with me.”

  Barney drew two beers and cut off their heads. He rang up sixty cents and gave me my change, and I went over to the booth with the beers.

  “Mr. Dal?” I said. “My name is Bill Everett. Barney tells me you have a problem I might help you on.”

  He looked up at me. “You’re the one he phoned? Sit down, Mr. Everett. And thanks very much for the beer.”

  I slid into the booth across from him. He took the last sip of his previous beer and wrapped nervous hands around the glass I’d just bought him.

  “I suppose you’ll think I’m crazy,” he said. “And maybe you’ll be right, but—I don’t understand it myself. The bartender thinks I’m crazy, I guess. Listen are you a doctor?”

  “Not exactly,” I told him. “Call me a consulting psychologist.”

  “Do you think I’m insane?”

  I said, “Most people who are don’t admit they might be. But I haven’t heard your story yet.”

  He took a draught of the beer and put the glass down again, but kept his hands tightly around the glass, possibly to keep them from shaking.

  He said, “I’m a Martian. The last one. All the others are dead. I saw their bodies only two hours ago.”

  “You were on Mars only two hours ago? How did you get here?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the horrible thing. I don’t know. All I know is that the others were dead, their bodies starting to rot. It was awful. There were a hundred million of us, and now I’m the last one.”

  “A hundred million. That’s the population of Mars?”

  “About that. A little over, maybe. But that was the population. They’re all dead now, except me. I looked in three cities, the three biggest ones. I was in Skar, and when I found all the people dead there, I took a targan—there was no one to stop me—and flew it to Undanel. I’d never flown one before, but the controls were simple. Everyone in Undanel was dead, too. I refueled and flew on. I flew low and watched and there was no one alive. I flew to Zandar, the biggest city—over three million people. And all of them were dead and starting to rot. It was horrible, I tell you. Horrible. I can’t get over the shock of it.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  “You can’t. Of course it was a dying world, anyway; we didn’t have more than another dozen generations left to us, you understand. Two centuries ago, we numbered three billion—most of them starving. It was the kryl, the disease that came from the desert wind and that our scientists couldn’t cure. In two centuries it reduced us to one-thirtieth of our number and it still kept on.”

  “Your people died, then, of this—kryl?”

  “No. When a Martian dies of kryl, he withers. The corpses I saw were not withered.” He shuddered and drank the rest of his beer. I saw that I’d neglected mine and downed it. I raised two fingers at Barney, who was watching our way and looking worried.

  My Martian went on talking. “We tried to develop space travel, but we couldn’t. We thought some of us might escape the kryl, if we came to Earth or to other worlds. We tried, but we failed. We couldn’t even get to Deimos or Phobos, our moons.”

  “You didn’t develop space travel? Then how—”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know, and I tell you it’s driving me wild. I don’t know how I got here. I’m Yangan Dal, a Martian. And I’m here, in this body. It’s driving me wild, I tell you.”

  Barney came with the beers. He looked worried enough, so I waited until he was out of hearing before I asked, “In this body? Do you mean—”

  “Of course. This isn’t I, this body I’m in. You don’t think Martians would look exactly like humans, do you? I’m three feet tall, weigh what would be about twenty pounds here on Earth. I have four arms with six-fingered hands. This body I’m in—it frightens me. I don’t understand it, any more than I know how I got here.”

  “Or how you happen to talk English? Or can you account for that?”

  “Well—in a way I can. This body; its name is Howard Wilcox. It’s a bookkeeper. It’s married to a female of this species. It works at a place called the Humbert Lamp Company. I’ve got all its memories and I can do everything it could do; I know everything it knew, or knows. In a sense, I am Howard Wilcox. I’ve got stuff in my pockets to prove it. But it doesn’t make sense, because I’m Yangan Dal, and I’m a Martian. I’ve even got this body’s tastes. I like beer. And if I think about this body’s wife, I—well, I love her.”

  I stared at him and pulled out my cigarettes, held out the package to him. “Smoke?”

  “This body—Howard Wilcox—doesn’t smoke. Thanks, though. And let me buy us another round of beers. There’s money in these pockets.”

  I signaled Barney.

  “
When did this happen? You say only two hours ago? Did you ever suspect before then that you were a Martian?”

  “Suspect? I was a Martian. What time is it?”

  I looked at Barney’s clock. “A little after nine.”

  “Then it’s a little longer than I thought. Three and a half hours. It would have been half past five when I found myself in this body, because it was going home from work then, and from its memories I know it had left work half an hour before then, at five.”

  “And did you—it—go home?”

  “No, I was too confused. It wasn’t my home. I’m a Martian. Don’t you understand that? Well, I don’t blame you if you don’t, because I don’t, either. But I walked. And I—I mean Howard Wilcox—got thirsty and he—I—” He stopped and started over again. “This body got thirsty and I stopped in here for a drink. After two or three beers, I thought maybe the bartender there could give me some advice and I started talking to him.”

  I leaned forward across the table. “Listen, Howard,” I said, “you were due home for dinner. You’re making your wife worry like anything about you unless you phoned her. Did you?”

  “Did I—Of course not. I’m not Howard Wilcox.” But a new type of worry came into his face.

  “You’d better phone her,” I said. “What’s there to lose? Whether you are Yangan Dal or Howard Wilcox, there’s a woman sitting home worrying about you or him. Be kind enough to phone her. Do you know the number?”

  “Of course. It’s my own—I mean it’s Howard Wilcox’s—”

  “Quit tying yourself into grammatical knots and go make that phone call. Don’t worry about thinking up a story yet; you’re too confused. Just tell her you’ll explain when you get home, but that you’re all right.”

  He got up like a man in a daze and headed for the phone booth.

  I went over to the bar and had another quickie, straight.

  Barney said, “Is he—uh—”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “There’s something about it I still don’t get.” I got back to the booth.

  He was grinning weakly. He said, “She sounded madder than hoptoads. If I—if Howard Wilcox does go home, his story had better be good.” He took a gulp of beer. “Better than Yangan Dal’s story, anyway.” He was getting more human by the moment.

  But then he was back into it again. He stared at me. “I maybe should have told you how it happened from the beginning. I was shut up in a room on Mars. In the city of Skar. I don’t know why they put me there, but they did. I was locked in. And then for a long time they didn’t bring me food, and I got so hungry that I worked a stone loose from the floor and started to scrape my way through the door. I was starving. It took me three days—Martian days, about six Earth days—to get through, and I staggered around until I found the food quarters of the building I was in. There was no one there and I ate. And then—”

  “Go on,” I said. “I’m listening.”

  “I went out of the building and everyone was lying in the open, in the streets, dead. Rotting.” He put his hands over his eyes. “I looked in some houses, other buildings. I don’t know why or what I was looking for, but nobody had died indoors. Everybody was lying dead in the open, and none of the bodies were withered, so it wasn’t kryl that killed them.”

  “Then, as I told you, I stole the targan—or I guess I really didn’t steal it, because there was no one to steal it from—and flew around looking for someone alive. Out in the country it was the same way—everybody lying in the open, near the houses, dead. And Undanel and Zandar, the same.”

  “Did I tell you Zandar’s the biggest city, the capital? In the middle of Zandar there’s a big open space, the Games Field, that’s more than an Earth-mile square. And all the people in Zandar were there, or it looked like all. Three million bodies, all lying together, like they’d gathered there to die, out in the open. Like they’d known. Like everyone, everywhere else, was out in the open, but here they were all together, the whole three million of them.”

  “I saw it from the air, as I flew over the city. And there was something in the middle of the field, on a platform. I went down and hovered the targan—it’s a little like your helicopters, I forgot to mention—I hovered over the platform to see what was there. It was some kind of a column made of solid copper. Copper on Mars is like gold is on Earth. There was a push-button set with precious stones set in the column. And a Martian in a blue robe lay dead at the foot of the column, right under the button. As though he’d pushed it—and then died. And everybody else had died, too, with him. Everybody on Mars, except me.”

  “And I lowered the targan onto the platform and got out and I pushed the button. I wanted to die, too; everybody else was dead and I wanted to die, too. But I didn’t. I was riding on a streetcar on Earth, on my way home from work, and my name was—”

  I signaled Barney.

  “Listen, Howard,” I said. “We’ll have one more beer and then you’d better get home to your wife. You’ll catch hell from her, even now, and the longer you wait, the worse it’ll be. And if you’re smart, you’ll take some candy or flowers along and think up a really good story on the way home. And not the one you just told me.”

  He said, “Well—”

  I said, “Well me no wells. Your name is Howard Wilcox and you’d better get home to your wife. I’ll tell you what may have happened. We know little about the human mind, and many strange things happen to it. Maybe the medieval people had something when they believed in possession. Do you want to know what I think happened to you?”

  “What? For Heaven’s sake, if you can give me any explanation—except tell me that I’m crazy—”

  “I think you can drive yourself batty if you let yourself think about it, Howard. Assume there’s some natural explanation and then forget it. I can make a random guess what may have happened.”

  Barney came with the beers and I waited until he’d gone back to the bar. I said, “Howard, just possibly a man—I mean a Martian—named Yangan Dal did die this afternoon on Mars. Maybe he really was the last Martian. And maybe, somehow, his mind got mixed up with yours at the moment of his death. I’m not saying that’s what happened, but it isn’t impossible to believe. Assume it was that, Howard, and fight it off. Just act as though you are Howard Wilcox—and look in a mirror if you doubt it. Go home and square things with your wife, and then go to work tomorrow morning and forget it. Don’t you think that’s the best idea?”

  “Well, maybe you’re right. The evidence of my senses—”

  “Accept it. Until and unless you get better evidence.”

  We finished off our beers and I put him into a taxi. I reminded him to stop for candy or flowers and to work up a good and reasonable alibi, instead of thinking about what he’d been telling me.

  I went back upstairs in the Trib building and into Cargan’s office and closed the door behind me.

  I said, “It’s all right, Cargan. I straightened him out.”

  “What had happened?”

  “He’s a Martian, all right. And he was the last Martian left on Mars. Only he didn’t know we’d come here; he thought we were all dead.”

  “But how—How could he have been overlooked? How could he not have known?”

  I said, “He’s an imbecile. He was in a mental institution in Skar and somebody slipped up and left him in his room when the button was pushed that sent us here. He wasn’t out in the open, so he didn’t get the mentaport rays that carried our psyches across space. He escaped from his room and found the platform in Zandar, where the ceremony was, and pushed the button himself. There must have been enough juice left to send him after us.”

  Cargan whistled softly. “Did you tell him the truth? And is he smart enough to keep his trap shut?”

  I shook my head. “No, to both questions. His I. Q. is about fifteen, at a guess. But that’s as smart as the average Earthman, so he’ll get by here all right. I convinced him he really was the Earthman his psyche happened to get into.”

  �
�Lucky thing he went into Barney’s. I’ll phone Barney in a minute and let him know it’s taken care of. I’m surprised he didn’t give the guy a mickey before he phoned us.”

  I said, “Barney’s one of us. He wouldn’t have let the guy get out of there. He’d have held him till we got there.”

  “But you let him go. Are you sure it’s safe? Shouldn’t you have—”

  “He’ll be all right,” I said. “I’ll assume responsibility to keep an eye on him until we take over. I suppose we’ll have to institutionalize him again after that. But I’m glad I didn’t have to kill him. After all, he is one of us, imbecile or not. And he’ll probably be so glad to learn he isn’t the last Martian that he won’t mind having to return to an asylum.”

  I went back into the city room and to my desk. Slepper was gone, sent out somewhere on something. Johnny Hale looked up from the magazine he was reading. “Get a story?” he asked.

  “Nah,” I said. “Just a drunk being the life of the party. I’m surprised at Barney for calling.”

  MAN OF DISTINCTION

  There was this Hanley, Al Hanley, and you wouldn’t have thought to look at him that he was ever going to amount to much. And if you’d known his life history, up to the time the Darians came you’d never have guessed how thankful you’re going to be—once you’ve read this story—for Al Hanley.

  At the time it happened Hanley was drunk. Not that that was anything unusual—he’d been drunk a long time and it was his ambition to stay that way although it had reached the stage of being a tough job. He had run out of money, then out of friends to borrow from. He had worked his way down his list of acquaintances to the point where he considered himself lucky to average two bits a head on them.

  He had reached the sad stage of having to walk miles to see someone he knew slightly so he could try to borrow a buck or a quarter. The long walk would wear off the effects of the last drink—well, not completely but somewhat—so he was in the predicament of Alice when she was with the Red Queen and had to do all the running she could possibly do just to stay in the same place.